


Wild Goose Chase

by Quercusrobur



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Backstory, Explanations, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Light Angst, Pre-Episode: s12e05 Fugitive of the Judoon, Timey-Wimey, jack loves the doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:27:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29413380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quercusrobur/pseuds/Quercusrobur
Summary: What was Jack doing before we see him in Fugitive of the Judoon? Looking for the Doctor, of course. And you know how that goes -- you can find the Doctor, but it's never the one you're looking for.How Jack ended up in a stolen ship trying to fish the Doctor up to him, and why that really did seem like a good plan right up until the nanogenes started in.
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor & Jack Harkness, Future Doctor/Jack Harkness, Sixth Doctor & Jack Harkness, The Doctor & Jack Harkness, Twelfth Doctor & Jack Harkness
Comments: 10
Kudos: 21





	Wild Goose Chase

**Author's Note:**

> _n.b. Author plays a bit fast and loose with some of these scenes and references[one of their own fics](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17968241) just to amuse themself._

_Find the Doctor_ , they said. _Deliver this message_ , they said.

How they found _him_ , Jack isn’t quite certain. He was just passing through, looking into his own concerns in a time far removed from what he thinks of as his own present era; but apparently this is one of those places he’ll make a lasting impression.

They showed him the future, then, and he didn’t like it at all.

Still. “That’s really not how time travel works,” he cautioned, willing to try but not hopeful. “I’m here because this already happened. I’d be taking a message to the Doctor to prevent something I’ve already seen. There’s only so far you can bend causality before the universe gets its knickers in a twist and I’m not the one who can tell you exactly where that limit is.”

 _Perhaps some part of it can still be changed. We have to try_ , they pleaded, and he couldn’t find an argument for that.

“Fine,” said Jack, already counting up the wild days ahead of him, “but you know, I’ve tried that _find the Doctor_ thing before and it’s not as easy as you seem to think it is -”

 _The artron signature is unmistakable_ , they said, and gave him a tracker, as if that should help.

“This might work better if you got someone who won’t _break_ things if they scatter their timeline all over Earth,” Jack pointed out, trying not to look as though he’d just been handed the keys to a kingdom. “It’s going to get complicated.” The Doctor has always spent a lot of time on Earth; even if he is looking for a new incarnation Jack can’t imagine that part changing.

 _Your credentials are unimpeachable_ , they argued; which is true enough. To the Doctor's time sense, Jack cannot be counterfeited. Any message he relays will carry that weight of trust with it, and for this message, every possible advantage is justified.

“Fine. Alright, yeah. I’ll deliver your message. Can’t promise any more than that.” He takes a deep breath, salutes. He resists saying _see you in hell_ , and then, new toys in hand, makes his way out of this hell he hopes no one ever has to see again.

As soon as he is out of earshot he lets the gleeful grin onto his face and dances a few steps with a whoop of delight. Maybe a fool's errand, certainly a wild goose chase - he'll happily goose a wild Time Lord - but it's always a good day when he's off to find the Doctor.

-

With the ability to detect temporal proximity as well as spatial, the tracker turns out to be some good after all; enough that Jack spends a few minutes resisting the temptation to crack it open then and there and see if he can’t integrate the technology into his vortex manipulator, or try to find someone who can. But that risks breaking it.

After he finds the Doctor, then. It’s his. No one said anything about returns.

Armed with his fancy new piece of kit, Jack considers his options. Earth is right out, unless he misses the millenia in which his timeline is already abundantly entangled. Not to mention - Jack laughs ruefully as he imagines how confused the tracker might get if he does anything but a straight zero-time-displacement search anywhere on Earth. Fifty traces? A hundred? He would be lucky if the thing didn’t blow its own circuits in self-defence.

Perhaps the moon. The Doctor can’t have been there too often, there isn’t anything _there_ in his favourite centuries. After a quick check of his also newly-upgraded enviro-suit, Jack keys in approximate coordinates, aiming for just after the period of Earth’s history most dangerous for him to interact with, and teleports.

There’s nothing there, of course. Nothing but the landscape of stark shadows and grey regolith, settling slightly after his arrival. Nothing but the vast sky overhead, dark and deep, the Earth a bright marble rolling through space, the Sun gleaming dangerously unfiltered near the horizon. Jack is protected - and immortal - but still he turns away from it as he raises his tracker. A twelve thousand kilometre radius covers the moon; ten years’ time displacement seems a reasonable place to start.

Five results.

Jack stares in dismay at the screen as it revises to three results. Six. One. Five again. Twelve. Three. Eight.

“I knew it,” he sighs. “Couldn’t possibly be that easy.” He watches the display for another minute, then picks the result that seems to appear on the list most often. It is unfortunately in 2010, within the dangerous years, but hopefully the moon is far enough away it won’t be a problem.

He arrives just as the TARDIS materialises, which is encouraging. All ready to be his usual boisterously annoying self, Jack stops short when the Doctor pokes that immediately recognisable head of floppy hair out the door and looks around. He straightens in surprise, tugs at his bowtie, and frowns at Jack.

“Is this a joke?”

“Not that I know of,” Jack says, confused.

The Doctor frowns harder. “Jack, _what are you doing on the moon?_ ”

He still doesn’t know what the joke is, but the indignant offense in the Time Lord’s voice is funny enough on its own to make Jack throw his head back and laugh. “Looking for a different you,” he admits. “What are _you_ doing on the moon?”

The Doctor eyes him suspiciously, then huffs a reluctant laugh. “Quick run-in. I hope you’re not planning on popping up everywhere I go.”

Considering his current mission, Jack isn’t at all certain how to answer that one. “Aw, come on. Didn’t you miss me?”

“Haven’t had time to,” the Doctor says dismissively; Jack might take offense if he weren’t still smiling. He looks around vaguely and shrugs. “Definitely the moon, anyway. Well, back we go.”

“Wait! Can you - do you remember any other times you were here? It would really help.”

The Doctor’s eyes return to Jack, curious and appraising. “And why would you need to know that, I wonder?”

“All in a good cause,” Jack promises. “Trying to avoid spoilers.”

“ _Spoilers_ ,” the Doctor scoffs. “I met someone who said that…” He trails off. “Nevermind. Fine. There was the bit with the Judoon, of course, can’t miss that. That was… 2008?” He looks around again as if expecting to see his earlier self, although Jack is certain the year is 2010. “I suppose it was just an hour or so of 2008. Well. I was here in 1969, of course. Again in 1970 I think. 1963. Sometime in the 1980s. I seem to recall… 2015? Or ‘18? But that can’t be right. Earth isn’t on track for a moon colony for decades yet. 2022. 2094. And of course there’s plenty here later, much more fun to visit in the 27th century, I don’t know why anyone bothers yet.”

Laughing, Jack pokes at the screen of his tracker, matching up dates. “Good question.”

“Well, I’d be gone by now if you didn’t keep turning up places!”

“Go on,” Jack says as he shoos the impatient Time Lord away. “Thank you. See you sometime.” The Doctor pauses as if he is waiting for Jack to say something else, but when Jack looks up at him, he simply smiles, raises a hand in an awkward wave, and disappears back into the TARDIS. Jack shakes his head.

Vague memories to match the vague readings from the tracker, he supposes; timelines of questionable reality, past visits to futures that probably haven’t come to pass. Perhaps if he aims more toward the middle of the twenty first century. Bingo - there’s one in 2049 that looks promising.

Jack steps through nothing into the dark opening of a tunnel, raw sunlight casting stark shadows. He can’t see a thing in the darkness. “Doc?” he calls. “Hey -”

Then something shoves him out into the light and that ridiculous old orange spacesuit the Doctor keeps around is pushing past him. It turns and Jack can see the Doctor shouting at him, that angular face drawn in furious lines, eyebrows knit above like little thunderclouds. Jack taps his ear. Instead of anything sensible the Doctor just grabs him again and jams his helmet against the side of Jack’s head.

“Get out of here, idiot!” he yells again, enunciating very precisely.

“Why, what’s -” Jack says; then he notices the shadows seem to be moving. “I can help -”

“I’m going _there_ -” the Doctor says, pointing to an admittedly very nearby base. “And you are going _away_. Now!”

He lets go and lopes off without a look back, and Jack stares after him until the seething shadows resolve into monstrous spider creatures. Then he growls in frustration and does as ordered.

Nevermind the moon. Mars, he’ll try Mars. There are no spider creatures on Mars, and there’s a good, solid reading in 2058. Jack sets his vortex manipulator and steps through nothing again, gritting his teeth. Too many trips too quickly starts feeling a lot like getting hit in the head with a brick.

He steps out into red dust, red sky, jagged red rocks on a jagged red hillside. That orange spacesuit again, standing staring out over the landscape.

Staring out over Bowie Base One.

The Doctor turns, and it’s _him_. “Jack?” he says, adorably bewildered as Jack swallows the cheerful greeting and takes a quick step back.

“Oh, no,” Jack says, shaking his head. “No, I’m not touching this with a ten foot pole. Forget you saw me.”

Resigning himself to the brick upside the head again, Jack closes his eyes and teleports away. He _knew_ it couldn’t be that easy.

-

With intense relief Jack falls into a bed three galaxies away, a thousand years before his employers were ever born. It’s a fantastic bed, soft and quiet and, above all, _horizontal_. His pulse pounds in his head; his skin feels scalded, scalp to feet. He’s well used to the punch in the gut of travel by vortex manipulator, but seven jumps in as many subjective minutes is enough to start smearing neurons together and he’s just lucky he doesn’t have to worry about living with the aftereffects.

He sleeps, and dreams of the devastation he is trying to prevent; when he wakes, he has a plan.

He’s going to crib off the work of one Dr. River Song, noted Doctor hunter. 

Slipping away to the 52nd century, Jack helps himself to the Luna University Library’s complete collection of River’s monographs on the subject. It was never her primary line of research, but she never did stop looking for stories about the Doctor, either. Many of the references have identifying information, and Jack skips those if he recognises the incarnation of the Doctor they describe. But scattered throughout, there are plenty of other places and times mentioned to keep him busy.

Jack is searching for a particular point in the Doctor’s timeline, a time before he encounters the hidden Cyberium or its twisted, half-converted acolyte. In the fragmentary audio records Jack reviewed, the sensor readings, the barely-there visuals, there was no voice or face Jack recognised; only the name, _Doctor_. He is searching for a Doctor he doesn’t know. He is bored to death of himself, sometimes, but the idea of discovering new Doctors out there in the wild is the kind of thrill that keeps him going.

Not that he would ever, _ever_ object to spending time with the ones he already knows, of course. But if someone gets to pick which Doctor he finds, it surely isn't Jack.

-

"Doctor! Quick, over here!" Jack ducks back into the side corridor and the Doctor tumbles through behind him - complaining, of course.

"Was that really necessary -"

"Hey, come on, you missed me, admit it -" But Jack's grin freezes on his face as he turns and catches a glimpse of unmistakable technicolour coat. "Oh, not you again."

The Doctor brushes himself off, visibly offended. "If anyone is _not,_ here, it's you, whoever you are. Although you really rather _are_ , aren’t you. _What_ are you?” He peers curiously at Jack, who rolls his eyes.

"Still subtle as the proverbial blunt object, I see. You’ll forget this anyway, so I might as well say that coat still gives me a headache. Comfy, though.”

His hands dart to his lapels defensively. "You can't be me. I'd know if you were me!"

"If I were you, I'd know where to find you!" Jack winks, blows a kiss, and disappears before the Doctor can dissolve into an apoplectic fit at the idea of anyone but him wearing his beloved coat.

Safely away, Jack shakes his head fondly and keeps on down his list. He's been through the UNIT files and recognises what of the Doctor's faces show up there on sight, along with a fair few of his companions. Often Jack spots the Doctor before they get to interact at all; even a brief conversation with a Doctor who doesn't recognise him is vastly preferable to endless repetitions of that.

-

The TARDIS is looking a bit dilapidated, her bright blue paint faded and scuffed, her edges nicked and dented. Jack looks around warily, in case whatever managed to do that to her is still around, but all he sees are the unmoving rocks scattered over the hillsides. 

“He’s not treating you right, old girl,” he says, picking his way down to where she sits, quiet and still. Is she _smaller_ than usual? “Looks like a rough-and-tumble life this time. Think he could spare some rough-and-tumble for me?” Jack raises his hand to knock, but pauses at the sound of an approaching commotion. 

It bursts into view, resolving into a man towing a young woman along by the hand, both racing hell-for-leather toward the TARDIS. Face breaking into an eager grin, Jack stands aside and waits. Not too terribly different from the Doctors he’s met, this one looks excellent in the stamina department, with a pleasant sort of 27th century everyman look about him that probably gets him into all kinds of places with ease. His friend is lovely too, in that wide-eyed way the Doctor is always falling for.

Something explodes behind them and they both turn to look back. They stare at each other for a moment, then look toward the TARDIS - which is when they notice Jack, now that they aren’t staring at the ground to avoid breaking their ankles. The girl gives a startled little shriek and the Doctor scowls at him.

Jack smiles disarmingly and gives her a little bow. “Captain Jack Harkness, at your service. Delighted to meet you. And you!” He turns to the Doctor and gives him a careful once over and a wink. “All this searching has certainly been worth it. Should have known I’d find you running from something, I suppose.”

“Who the devil are you?” the Doctor demands, tugging his friend back a step protectively. 

Jack’s heart sinks. _That_ wasn’t in the script. “You can’t have forgotten me, Doctor -”

“Doctor!” the pretty companion gasps, pointing back the way they came. “Oh, Steven, the Doctor!”

Another man staggers into view, a man much older looking and yet much too young, and Jack realises a number of things very quickly; the first of which is that he should have paid more attention to the UNIT files. Specifically, to the people who were _not_ the Doctor. Because the man he’s been talking to is _not_ the Doctor - but the man who’s just come into view _is_ , and Jack shouldn’t be here.

As soon as everyone’s eyes are off him, he opens the vortex and steps away into nothing.

No one ever said it was a _good_ plan.

-

Jack sleeps, and dreams of the vortex; when he wakes he can still see its nauseous eddies in the shadows. A week off threatens to slide into a month.

Still, every time he considers giving up, he thinks about that future, and he gets back up, and he goes on.

Jack sees spacecraft and castles, cities in their prime and civilisations fallen to decay and ruin; he finds himself stumbling through more underground tunnels and rocky hillsides than he could ever keep track of.

On two occasions Jack spots Daleks before he finds the Doctor and disappears as quickly as he came. Even if it were the right Doctor, it is certainly the wrong time. 

One time the Dalek spots him first. 

When Jack revives, he has been dragged behind an outcrop of rocks and he can hear the TARDIS singing faintly to him. “Thanks, beautiful,” he mumbles, wincing at the throbbing headache. If the Doctor didn’t stay to talk, Jack supposes he oughtn’t to either, but he can’t face another teleport just yet. He curls in on himself and pretends to still be dead.

One time… one time he sees Rose. Momentarily paralysed, he thanks the gods for the crowd between them. Before or after his time, he doesn’t know, but he is certain there is no past Jack here - every moment of those last few months of his mortal life are seared into his memory by the inferno at the end like outlines on a sun-faded wall. As the crowd carries him away, he hears the Doctor’s voice, _his_ Doctor, and it takes every time-honed grain of self-control in him not to go running back. Instead he waits until distance swallows up every trace of his past, then takes a breath and teleports away. Another place, another time.

-

Jack steps out into the shadow of trees, the smell of a place unburdened by industry. He can’t see the TARDIS, but he can hear her nearby and she sounds happy. What Jack _can_ see is a very attractive young man, leant casually against the trunk of an unremarkable tree, looking out over a valley covered in young greenery. He startles as Jack appears; Jack grins. He’s very cute like that.

He scowls and Jack is delighted to find he’s even cuter like _that_. “What are you -”

“Gorgeous view here,” Jack interrupts, giving him an appreciative once over. “Don’t you think?”

“Erm,” he says, gaze slipping away to the side as he flushes slightly. "Is that really... Look -"

Another one of those wide-eyed youngsters, Jack supposes; he’ll probably be yelling for the Doctor any minute now about handsome strangers appearing out of nowhere. Stepping up beside him, Jack tones down the flirting a little and offers, “Captain Jack Harkness. I’m a friend of the Doctor’s, came here looking for him.” He shows off his tracker briefly before slipping it into a pocket. “Do you travel with him?”

When he looks over again the young man is grinning at him, eyebrow cocked jauntily above laughing eyes. “ _Ja-ack_ ,” he sing-songs, the cadence so familiar even if the voice is new. “Really?”

Jack stares for a moment then nearly falls over laughing. “You’re expecting me to keep up with some daft bugger who keeps changing his face without notice?”

“Well you’ve always recognised this face before!” The Doctor actually looks somewhat put out about it, so Jack sweeps him into a hug and buries his nose in the Doctor’s hair as he feels arms wind tight around him without the slightest hesitation. The future seems a little brighter, suddenly. “What are you doing here, though?” he asks, a bit muffled by Jack’s coat. Somewhat unwillingly, Jack lets him go; but he doesn’t object when Jack leaves an arm around his shoulders.

“Got a warning for you -”

But he cuts Jack off. “About the Lone Cyberman, I remember.” Jack sighs, realising _this_ isn’t the right Doctor, either. “Sorry. No, I meant, what are you doing _here_. I thought you were following River’s notes. There can’t have been any records left here…” He trails off, face turned away.

“I am, yeah.” Looking out over the view again curiously, Jack takes it in with new eyes. Bright, low greenery covers the ground as far as he can see, a bumper crop of young trees shooting up through it to a uniform height save for the occasional lone trunk standing tall. Some small groups of the taller trees remain in areas protected by rocky ledges, like where he stands with the Doctor. As if it were all growing back from the same disaster; as if what had been here had been razed to the ground.

As if the world had burned.

“What happened?” Jack asks, not sure whether he expects an answer.

“An end,” the Doctor says, leaning against him. “I thought… it was an end. But look at it now, Jack.”

“Looks more like a beginning, now.”

“Time is funny like that,” the Doctor says quietly. A moment more, and he pulls away and shoves his hands in his pockets. “I suppose you’ll have to be off? You’ll find me when I need you, Captain, don’t lose heart.”

“I -” An immense _CRACK_ cleaves the air between them, and a line of fire streaks across the sky to flare over the horizon. Jack turns wide eyes to the Doctor, who is beginning to grin. 

“Can’t imagine how anyone would have records of me being here,” he says thoughtfully, “unless something new happened. Shall we?” 

“How could I turn down such a pretty face?” Jack asks, grinning back at him. The Doctor rolls his eyes, then clicks his fingers and laughs at Jack’s surprise as a door swings open in the tree he had been leaning against.

-

It would be so much easier if he dared entangle himself with Earth again quite yet. The Doctor may hop about through his adopted home’s timeline with relative impunity, but many of his incarnations have a particular time period they visit frequently and Jack has a pretty good guess when to aim to find the newest Doctor he hasn’t yet met. But he has none of that natural Time Lord immunity to paradox and there are too many of him already there to feel comfortable with tearing about at random.

He could track the TARDIS, if he were on Earth. He could wait, on the slow path, disturbing the timelines as little as possible. He could race across the city, the country, the planet, to get there before the Doctor disappeared again.

Searching for the Doctor is so much easier than waiting. Jack keeps searching. He’ll come up with a better plan somewhere along the way.

Some days he simply sets the tracker to scan as widely as possible and follows where it leads. He finds himself once on what appears to be a finely constructed sailing ship. As he turns a corner the Doctor brushes past him, a frown on that handsome, boyish face, cricket suit a bright spot in the dark wood-paneled corridor. “Excuse me,” he says absently, not giving Jack a second look, and disappears around another corner. The appearance of a line of people wearing bulky spacesuits does not lessen Jack’s consternation.

Once he interrupts a lively argument and barely has time to take in the scene before all three of the principal parties turn to him, scowl in unison, and chorus, "Not _now_ , Jack!" Mouth agape, Jack can feel the grin taking over his face as his eyes dart between the one person he recognises and the other two - the other two _Doctors._ The one he knows steps forward to block his view as much as possible, and although he looks intensely amused as well, insists, "Absolutely not," as he shoos Jack away. 

Jack stands to attention, salutes as cheekily as he can - which is very - and, just as he's disappearing, complains, "How come I'm never invited on these dates?" The explosion of voices in response is _hilarious_.

Once he steps out directly into space. Disorientated by the sudden loss of gravity, the swoop in the pit of his stomach and the ringing in his ears and the endless smothering emptiness of the deep dark surrounding him, Jack nearly hits the emergency recall on his vortex manipulator before belatedly realising he can breathe with no difficulty. He looks around. At his back a shining, striated plane stretches away in a foreshortened arc that curves around an enormous gas giant planet; and on it beings of various descriptions appear to be _skating_. Someone is waving to him. Utterly bemused, Jack waves back, because it’s Clara, and he supposes the Doctor must be about, and maybe he _could_ do with a break.

But perhaps the most confusing is the time he appears in midair, staring at a wooly head half buried in a book held carefully in one hand whilst the Doctor’s other hand holds the end of the long scarf he is dangling from. The split-second view ends with a flash of wide eyes as Jack falls past, laughing. Still the wrong Doctor, anyway.

-

It’s frankly ridiculous how useless the tracker is. All it does is make exponentially worse the same problem Jack has always had: he can find the Doctor, but it’s never the Doctor he’s looking for. 

Some days he could scream.

Some days he _does_ scream, although it really doesn’t help the headache that seems to have taken up permanent residence behind his eyes.

But now he has finally found himself a way around the problem of Earth, and he will soon be done with this fascinating, infuriating quest. On the theory it’s easier to get bail money _after_ than permission _before_ , Jack has liberated a ship which has very little to recommend it aside from the quanticum scoop that will let him take action at a distance, and now sits in Earth orbit, in the year 2019, almost certainly in close temporal proximity to the one Doctor he still hasn’t caught. This way he doesn’t have to set foot on Earth at all, just scoop up the slippery Time Lord and bring him topside.

“Okay,” Jack says, stretching his neck and cracking his knuckles. “Let’s try this again.” Calibrate, feed the information from the tracker in, scan - "Oh, _come on!_ Three matches _today?_ Just once, Doctor, couldn't you for _just once_ make this easy on me?"


End file.
